Happiness after Grief

feels like such a betrayal: the hurt not denied, not pushed away, but gone entirely
for that moment you can't help feeling good in, a moment of sudden, irrational joy
over nothing of consequence, really, which makes it all somehow seem even worse.
Shouldn't happiness be the result of some grand event, something adequate to counter
that aching, gaping chasm that opened when . . . But, no: it's merely this: there goes
our little neighbor, running barefoot, no pants, fox stole wrapped around her shoulders.

Kim Addonizio
The Threepenny Review
Winter 2006

Copyright © 2005 by The Threepenny Review.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

REMEMBER TO SUPPORT POETRY DAILY'S GENEROUS SPONSORS... Sponsor PD!